A click away from the ‘creepy line’

Every “like" icon you click, email you send, and web page you visit leaves a trail to an intensely seductive honeypot for advertisers and law enforcement agencies alike.

The increasing ubiquity of digital communications is redefining the boundaries between what we keep to ourselves and what is shared with the rest of the world, often whether we like it or not.

The Sydney Writers Festival this week has the increasingly blurred line between our public and private lives as its overarching theme.

It’s tempting to wax hysterical about the malevolent risks of a hyper-Orwellian society when it comes to worrying about the digital footprint we all leave.

But that would be silly.

Rationalist philosopher A. C. Grayling pointed out to The Australian Financial Review after a talk to launch the Writers Festival that we live in a relatively benign democracy, so it’s important to keep things in perspective.

Nevertheless, Grayling added, we should be vigilant about the risks we take when we hand over the kind of blanket powers that the Gestapo would have loved.

The zeal with which democratic governments are introducing digital snooping legislation shows no sign of subsiding. Many have beefed up, or are seeking to beef up, the ability of their agencies to undertake warrant-free interception of people’s communications, almost always using the fight against terrorism as their justification.

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We want our public authorities to protect us from such dangers, and if they need to use the latest technology in a clandestine manner to do so, then so be it. The problem arises when technology is used simply because it can be. Powers put in place to stop crazed bombers should not be used to capture people with overdue library books.

According to barrister Kim Heitman, who is a director of Electronic Frontiers Australia, more than 95 per cent of the requests for wire-tapping used under the United States Patriot Act after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have related to ordinary crime, not terrorism at all.

Last week, Britain’s coalition government introduced controversial plans in the Queen’s Speech to increase the powers of government intelligence operatives to scrutinise information gathered by internet service providers.

The new system will allow spooks to track who is talking to whom and when – but not the content of the messages – without a warrant or judicial oversight.

Civil liberties campaigners have dubbed it a “grand snooping" charter, saying it risks breaching the privacy of law-abiding citizens.

In its defence, the Cameron government has pointed out that communications data has played a big role in every major terrorism bust, and in 95 per cent of all serious organised crime investigations. This of course raises the question: why do the authorities need more powers if they are having such success already?

Then there are the inevitable concerns about the cost of harvesting packet data that the internet service providers themselves have expressed.

The same worries were aired by local ISPs last year when Labor rammed the Cybercrime Amendment Bill 2011 through the House of Representatives.

The bill, now before the Senate, ostensibly aims to enable Australia to accede to the Council of Europe’s Convention on cybercrime. But it goes beyond what is necessary.

Of course, the powerful companies that we unwittingly share our intimate lives with on the internet do not have the fig leaf of counter-terrorism to turn to if they invade our privacy. Take Facebook.

The social network goes public today, and it’s priced for perfection at about $100 billion, about 30 times its annual sales.

Facebook’s business model, like that of Google, relies heavily on the exploitation of personal data. Google chief executive Eric Schmidt readily admits that his company’s policy is “to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it".

Pressure on Facebook to overstep this boundary for commercial gain will only grow once it is subject to quarterly reporting and scrutiny from investors who have probably overpaid for their shares. But founder
Mark Zuckerberg
knows from experience that Facebook will alienate users if it goes too far.

“Creepy" corporations and “Big Brother" governments represent threats to personal freedom. But let’s not get too paranoid about it.